(10-20-2021 07:38 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  Let's set aside the entire topic of "Do the autobids deserve to be there?" because it's absolutely insane to waste time on when the whole thing is self-fulfilling.

It doesn't actually MATTER how often a 16 beats a 1, or a non-P5 team upsets a P5 team, or how good any of these teams really are.

It's the DREAM being sold. The fan bases of Abilene Christian and Oral Roberts and Iona and Colgate are tuning in to see their teams. The fans of 270 non-power teams watch those games because they dream it's THEIR SCHOOL one day knocking off the higher seed and making a name for themselves like UMBC or Gonzaga.

And when you close the door on that ever happening again, and you close the door on someone ever becoming Gonzaga again (and actively kick Gonzaga out?), there's going to be a massive, massive, massive backlash.

They'd be ticking off the fan bases of 280 teams, drastically changing something even non-fans still pay some attention to into something they may not; creating the PR hellstorm pointing out that they're all greedy dollar chasers kicking schools out of the dance just for more money, rendering their regular season practically meaningless because what's the point if 48, 64, 68 teams out of 71 make the P5 Basketball Tournament, and rendering their own conference tournaments entirely pointless!

For an amount of money that equals 10% of the revenue they already bring in?

I could give you FIVE better solutions for the P5 to be evil money-chasing monsters without anyone noticing, instead of having everyone notice.

Those schools have virtually no fans. The bottom 10 conferences don't move the needle. 107-55 games are not what gets people watching.

(10-20-2021 08:03 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 07:10 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 06:42 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 06:32 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  instead of squeezing out the likes of a “mid-major” who won their regular season conference but was upset in their conference tournament

Who squeezed that team out? Their own conference! Each conference is permitted to choose whether the regular season champ or the tournament winner gets the autobid. If the conference put a priority on their regular season champ getting in the tournament, they would give the autobid to the regular season champ. If, instead, they decide to leave the autobid up to 3 or 4 days of possibly fluky results, then they’ve decided they are okay with leaving their regular-season champ at the mercy of the tournament committee. Choices have consequences.

No doubt the lust for the $$$ from conference tournaments can have that impact. I’d still rather see those sort of teams in rather than a middling team from a major conference.

You could also make a similar consequences argument to those lower major conference teams “You chose to associate with Duke, UNC et al and get the associated resource and recruiting advantages of the ACC. In return, we expect you to finish no lower than 5th in the conference to get an NCAA bid…”

Money can’t be a major reason. There are 32 D-I conferences, and I will bet that more than half make either no money or only a minuscule amount from their conference tournament.

They want a conference tournament because even the teams that never finish in the top half of the conference want the chance to get lucky 2 or 3 days in a row and get a golden ticket, or at least be part of the conference’s one appearance per year somewhere on “the ESPN family of networks”. And whether the conference is high-major, mid-major, or low-major, coaches who had a poor season want one last shot at keeping their job for another year with a run in the conference tournament.

Regular season champs that lose their conference tournament but are otherwise worthy almost always get in anyway. A team that wins 20-plus games, wins its conference regular season, and has at least two quality non-conference wins doesn’t get left out.

They get left out plenty if they aren't in the top dozen conferences. They play in the NIT.

(10-20-2021 09:45 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 08:51 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The issue is money. If the autonomous schools believe the NCAA is paying out too little, is not getting close to the optimum revenue from the tournament, then they may well take their product elsewhere.

If they think (that is their consultants and TV networks tell them) they can make say 30-50% more money for their schools with their own tournament, then they'll do it. They'll figure out the rest at that point (where you all jumped to). But we are not there.

Right, but the whole reason the NCAA isn't "paying out enough" isn't the mid-majors, or the Ivory Tower in Indianapolis where they light cigars with the profits and polish their monocles...

It's that basketball people are compartmentalizing the basketball contract as basketball money instead of looking at all revenue and all expenses.

If you add up all the NCAA Revenue, subtract all the expenses, the profit is... the $613 million they're giving in distribution.

The TV contract for the women's tournament, and TWENTY-THREE OTHER SPORTS is $35.7 million.

If the P5 fights for $200 million more in MEN'S BASKETBALL revenue, they're going to be on the hook for $200 more in WOMEN'S SPORTS and non-revenue men's sports expenses.

NCAA as JR says is paying for their bureaucracy and all their non-sports programs. They subsidize Division II and Division III--all of that is paid for by the basketball tourney.

A lot of you don't remember when the tourney was 25 teams. And only champs went. And there were what, 150-200 Division I members? I know the number was around 250 in the 80s with 48 and 52 team tourneys. We've added 100 schools mostly tiny schools with tiny budgets and miniscule fan bases.

They would not be missed. Even most on this board couldn't tell you where many of these schools are.

And they are in Division I solely because of the basketball tourney money.

(10-20-2021 10:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  NCAA as JR says is paying for their bureaucracy and all their non-sports programs. They subsidize Division II and Division III--all of that is paid for by the basketball tourney.

Great PR move: Rob the D2 and D3 funding so the P5 can get richer.

(10-20-2021 10:14 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 09:23 PM)Wedge Wrote:  There is nothing wrong with that criterion. I don’t care what Kentucky does, and I don’t care where the games are played. Teams that play challenging non-conference games deserve more credit than teams that don’t. Look at Loyola-Chicago’s schedule for this season, for example. They have a few very solid non-con games. There’s no reason to put them on the same level as a team that wins 24 games while never playing a team in the top 100.

There is something wrong with it. It's dumb.

Loyola got the schedule this year by being legit good four years in a row. NOW people will play them that their Final Four coach took another job

Take a look at their 2017-18 OOC schedule: ONE non-conference win against the top 98 (at Florida).

They lost to NIT Boise State and beat 99 Wright State. Every else was 154+

By your criteria, they are not a deserving at-large team if they lose in the MVC tourney (and they barely survived the quarters, 54-50). They lose, it's "Sorry about your luck."

BUT THAT TEAM WENT TO THE FINAL FOUR!

The number of teams capable of deep NCAA runs being left out of the dance is very large.

So what? There are many power conference teams being left out that are also capable of making those runs. You want to let in every team that arguably has a chance of making a deep run, then you need a 96-team field. But if the field stays the size it is, then at-large choices have to be made based on regular-season resume, even if there are 20 or more teams not in the field that might have won 3 or 4 games if they were in the field.

(10-20-2021 10:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  A lot of you don't remember when the tourney was 25 teams. And only champs went. And there were what, 150-200 Division I members? I know the number was around 250 in the 80s with 48 and 52 team tourneys. We've added 100 schools mostly tiny schools with tiny budgets and miniscule fan bases.

They would not be missed. Even most on this board couldn't tell you where many of these schools are.

And they are in Division I solely because of the basketball tourney money.

There are far too many D1 schools with sub $20mm endowments. None of them belong in D1. That represents an average contribution of $400 per alum for a school with 50,000 alums and ignores capital gains. Pathetic.

Now, many of those schools are HBCUS and the current, ridiculous political climate would never allow anyone to say this and attach their name to it, but those schools have no business scooping up taxpayer and NCAA funds when their own alums do nothing to support alma mater.

The NCAAT would be fine dropping the bottom 5-10 conferences.

(10-20-2021 10:51 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 10:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  NCAA as JR says is paying for their bureaucracy and all their non-sports programs. They subsidize Division II and Division III--all of that is paid for by the basketball tourney.

Great PR move: Rob the D2 and D3 funding so the P5 can get richer.

Somebody is getting robbed alright and it's not the little guy. It's taxpayers. Big State U is fine. Donations cover them. It's mid major directional State U who is subsidized 25% or more that is having their revenue siphoned off so that their state's taxpayers have to dig deeper and pony up more so the NCAA can buy votes and support from their sports welfare bots which don't provide for their own tournaments and expense of play at such events.

It's fundamentally wrong to short change mid majors so that Division III can have a football championship.

So spare me the little guy hooey! It's little guys who are trying to actually compete that are being hosed by the NCAA's own perverse redistribution of revenue which like any such model keeps half or more with which to aggregate its own power while it placates the wealthy (football separation) and bills the middle class to by power among the poor.

You do realize that fielding sports programs is not a right? It is a privilege that comes with enough support from alumni, enough ticket sales, and enough excess tuition to provide it. And no state's citizens should be burdened to provide it for another state's school or for privates, and the NCAA was tasked with oversight of amateur athletics and not set up to redistribute wealth, which they did largely off of football proceeds until SCOTUS took it away in '83 with OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

Now it's basketball's turn to slap their hand away from the till. And it is past time for schools not to offer what they can't afford. It's the quickest way for G5's to get healthy since ultimately it is they who contribute funds they absolutely need to support Divisions II & III.

(10-20-2021 10:54 PM)Wedge Wrote:  So what? There are many power conference teams being left out that are also capable of making those runs. You want to let in every team that arguably has a chance of making a deep run, then you need a 96-team field. But if the field stays the size it is, then at-large choices have to be made based on regular-season resume, even if there are 20 or more teams not in the field that might have won 3 or 4 games if they were in the field.

That's a totally different argument, though. Of course there's a cutline and everyone will argue about where and who deserves a bid. But the topic came up because someone in the P5 wants to kick out the teams that "Don't deserve it" or "aren't good enough." And THAT is was it total crap.

Once they expanded the tournament, the 12-13-14-15-16 seed upsets have skyrocketed by percentage the last 10 tourneys. Four 15-seed wins over 2-seeds in 27 years of 64 teams; Four in the last 10 tournaments with 68 teams.

That basically proves my point, because there's no way to explain that trend and say the P5 superiority has gotten so vast that the one-bid champs no longer deserve NCAA tourney spots: If the P5 has gotten MORE SUPERIOR, then why are they losing to those teams MORE OFTEN?

Either the lower seeds are actually getting BETTER if they're upsetting teams more often (Probably not true, but would mean they deserve bids) OR...

When they squeezed in four more at-larges on the #11 seed line, the one-bid champs got their seed lines bumped down: In the old format, 2018 UMBC would be a 15 seed. So the numbers for big upsets are going up because the SAME QUALITY OF TEAM is seeded worse. Which makes them the SAME QUALITY, and therefore not suddenly deserving of being kicked out.

Was he also puking in a urinal when he gave this interview? Otherwise it wasn't him.

Over the last 10 NCAA tournaments there have been 160 Sweet Sixteen members.

22 were seeded at 11 or below.

13 of those were 11 seeds.

5 were 12 seeds.

2 were 13 seeds.

2 were 15 seeds.

Empirically if you were not one of the top 48 schools you percentage of making the Sweet 16 was 4 out of 160 or 2.5%

In the same time frame the eventual national champion was seeded:

1 - 4 times
2 - Once
3 - Twice
4 - Once
5 - Once
7 - Once

70% of the winners come out of the top 12 teams.
30% of the winners come from teams 13-28.

Of course this is just 2010 to 2021.

Now who are these 11 or below seeds to make it to the Sweet 16? Are they underdogs from a small conference or slumming major conference types?

Syracuse -2, NC State -1, UCLA - 2, Oregon -2, Oregon State -1, Tennessee - 1, Marquette - 1, Washington - 1, this means half of the 11 or below Sweet Sixteen teams were major conference schools.

So who is left?

Loyola, LaSalle, Oral Roberts, Richmond, VCU, Gonzaga, Dayton, Cornell. Ohio, and Xavier - are these really Cinderellas?

That leaves just one in the past 160 Sweet Sixteens - Florida Gulf Coast. They represent less than 1% of the Sweet 16 over the past decade.

Now as great as it might be to get an NCAA bid, what is the ethic behind teasing the bottom 200 of so of Division 1 Basketball with an invite to a tournament they not only can not win, but have less than a 1% chance of getting to the third round of a six round affair?

It's unethical and it takes advantage people's hubris.

In North Carolina we have 8 divisions of high schools based on the size of their enrollment. We don't ask small schools out at the hinterlands to play suburban powerhouses with 7-8 times the students and/or the ability to "recruit" kids within a large county. The smaller schools with far less resources are just being used as fodder within the Roman Arena with no hope of being rewarded with a championship.

BTW, I'm totally on board with making the D-I criteria much more difficult to achieve and shrinking Division I down to 275 schools.

But basing it on money, and revenue, and enrollment size is not the right way to go. Yeah, I'm totally biased because my school is FREAKING TINY. But don't tell me we aren't pulling our weight or "Can't support legit D-I athletics). We're reeling off at-large caliber seasons in 2016 (Screwed by Joe giving a handout to his Tulsa friends), 2018 (got one), 2021 and we're ranked #23 right now. We're not the ones who need to be kicked out...

Just having money doesn't mean you belong. Bonaventure and Davidson COMBINED spend less on athletics than Fordham, who is DMFL in A-10 hoops and has 1 NCAA bid since 1971 (when they won the MAAC, not the A-10). Davidson and Bona have 7 bids in the last 11 tournaments.

The real "culprits" in all of this would be the schools who are pretending to be someone they are not.

Legally, it's gotta be an open process: The criteria have to be high enough that you're pricing out a large number of broke schools, while not kicking out those who actually know what they're doing and do it well.

(10-21-2021 12:23 AM)JSchmack Wrote:  BTW, I'm totally on board with making the D-I criteria much more difficult to achieve and shrinking Division I down to 275 schools.

But basing it on money, and revenue, and enrollment size is not the right way to go. Yeah, I'm totally biased because my school is FREAKING TINY. But don't tell me we aren't pulling our weight or "Can't support legit D-I athletics). We're reeling off at-large caliber seasons in 2016 (Screwed by Joe giving a handout to his Tulsa friends), 2018 (got one), 2021 and we're ranked #23 right now. We're not the ones who need to be kicked out...

Just having money doesn't mean you belong. Bonaventure and Davidson COMBINED spend less on athletics than Fordham, who is DMFL in A-10 hoops and has 1 NCAA bid since 1971 (when they won the MAAC, not the A-10). Davidson and Bona have 7 bids in the last 11 tournaments.

The real "culprits" in all of this would be the schools who are pretending to be someone they are not.

Legally, it's gotta be an open process: The criteria have to be high enough that you're pricing out a large number of broke schools, while not kicking out those who actually know what they're doing and do it well.

Try about 160.

(10-21-2021 12:27 AM)Statefan Wrote:  

(10-21-2021 12:23 AM)JSchmack Wrote:  BTW, I'm totally on board with making the D-I criteria much more difficult to achieve and shrinking Division I down to 275 schools.

But basing it on money, and revenue, and enrollment size is not the right way to go. Yeah, I'm totally biased because my school is FREAKING TINY. But don't tell me we aren't pulling our weight or "Can't support legit D-I athletics). We're reeling off at-large caliber seasons in 2016 (Screwed by Joe giving a handout to his Tulsa friends), 2018 (got one), 2021 and we're ranked #23 right now. We're not the ones who need to be kicked out...

Just having money doesn't mean you belong. Bonaventure and Davidson COMBINED spend less on athletics than Fordham, who is DMFL in A-10 hoops and has 1 NCAA bid since 1971 (when they won the MAAC, not the A-10). Davidson and Bona have 7 bids in the last 11 tournaments.

The real "culprits" in all of this would be the schools who are pretending to be someone they are not.

Legally, it's gotta be an open process: The criteria have to be high enough that you're pricing out a large number of broke schools, while not kicking out those who actually know what they're doing and do it well.

Try about 160.

160 for hoops. Try 72 - 80 for football.

(10-21-2021 12:19 AM)Statefan Wrote:  Over the last 10 NCAA tournaments there have been 160 Sweet Sixteen members....

So who is left?

Loyola, LaSalle, Oral Roberts, Richmond, VCU, Gonzaga, Dayton, Cornell. Ohio, and Xavier - are these really Cinderellas?

That leaves just one in the past 160 Sweet Sixteens - Florida Gulf Coast. They represent less than 1% of the Sweet 16 over the past decade.

Now as great as it might be to get an NCAA bid, what is the ethic behind teasing the bottom 200 of so of Division 1 Basketball with an invite to a tournament they not only can not win, but have less than a 1% chance of getting to the third round of a six round affair?

It's unethical and it takes advantage people's hubris.

Well, that's not the point at all, though.

It's highly unethical to torture... but the solution isn't "Kill Them" or "Leave them to Die." The ethical thing is to have a fair playing field, which doesn't really exist, and yet plenty of people have success despite that.

What's really funny is that if you shrunk Division I down that much... All the teams that win 65% of their games would suddenly lose A TON of victories off their records.

You saw it a bit this past season when COVID reduced OOC play: Indiana had TWO buy games instead of SEVEN. They were 12-15 instead of 17-15.

The Top 160 in college basketball last year would lose 504 more times if the bottom 190 schools were kicked out.

Yes, I agree.
Getting 3X bank sucks.
Pay attention.
It's all about the Benjamins.
Football is the blueprint.

Just make everything a SEC, ACC, PAC-12, Big Ten show. Maybe Kansas can be in the Big Ten for basketball only and their football can be playing in the G5?

Totally defeats the purpose of March Madness. ORU was a highlight of the tournament. Hell, UCLA and Houston on their runs was awesome.

Agree almost 100% with what JSchmack seems to be trying to say. Pardon any misinterpretation. Some of the so-called "old-timers" around here are not old enough.

I remember the first tournament I got really excited about. (Personal landmark: Was about to graduate from 8th grade.) Some dinky school from Texas beat both Kansas and Kentucky to win in 1966. I remember it because the Texas school beat Kentucky with five black guys against five white guys. Big hullabaloo. The fact I had to look up was the name of the winner. It was called Texas Western (UTEP today) which is probably why I forgot. Name change. And there were 22 teams in it. Point is, those TW guys might never have gotten a chance to play in the "big dance" if the topic of this thread had taken hold.

The tournament grew because of the desire to increase opportunity for everyone. It was an exciting game that even a handful from Podunk U could watch and enjoy. It wasn't really about the money. And it wasn't about how big your name was. Or your conference. Those ego-trips came later and persist today.

Now somebody suggests cutting it to grab all the cash by deleting the "little guys" by arbitrarily drawing a line between those who "deserve" and those who don't.

Bee-otch about how the damn money is distributed if you want. Just leave the tournament itself alone. Not everything has to change just because it can.

Rant over. Bedtime for the old(er) guy.